President Trump’s revelation of classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week has Israel “boiling mad,” after other US officials confirmed that the intelligence originally came from an Israeli spy placed within the ISIS movement.

Israeli intelligence officials say this amounts to their “worst fears confirmed,” that the US, with whom they have an exclusive intelligence-sharing deal, are passing that information along without Israel’s prior knowledge. There has been some concern that the revelation could put the Israeli spy at risk, since Russia was told what city he was in.

Of course a lot of the speculation about actual danger being posed to the spy is based on speculation that Russia would want to out the spy as a way of ensuring he doesn’t hypothetically start spying on Syria’s government in the future. Whether this is true or not is unclear, particularly if he is proving valuable on intelligence against ISIS, who is a problem for Russia as much as the US.

Early after the election, Israeli intelligence officials were being warned specifically against sharing as much intelligence with Trump as they had with past US administrations, claiming that the intelligence might be passed on to Russia. That it indeed happened in this case is likely to raise a lot more eyebrows with respect to the Israel-Trump relationship.

Apparently Israel found out that ISIS planned a massive ‘exploding laptop in the checked luggage’ campaign targeting western air travel. One might wonder why, if bombs in laptops were such a great idea, AQ/ISIS wasted time with suicide bombers trying to find a match to ignite their Air Jordans and bvds?

Israeli spy within ISIS or adviser? In any case, maybe if the israelis weren’t making such a fuzz about it, no one would know israel was the source. I mean who is out there disclosing all this info? Not the Russians.

I don’t think it’s the leak that bothers the Israelis, the Russians weren’t going to do anything with it and they probably already knew from the israelis themselves. The fact that they got named though undermines their relationship with ISIS, which while easily overstated can at least be labeled as ‘very tolerant’.
And it’s not Trump who told the world about the Israelis either. It’s the press.

Indeed, Russia’s a much more valuable ally in the fight against ISIS and Al-Qaeda than Israel ever was. Truth is, Israel’s never had any allies, only vassals.
Israel’s the main creator of ISIS, through its Intelligence agency, the Mossad. After all, Israel’s been caring for wounded ISIS and Al-Qaeda fighters at its hospitals and sending them back to the Syrian war zones once they were healed.
Russia, on the other hand, has been Syria’s savior in the fight against the Jihadists (including Al-Qaeda and ISIS) for two years now. The Russians occupy the Khmeimem Airbase just outside the town of Latakia, as well as a naval base at the port city of Tartus. It’s mainly from these two bases that Russian aircraft and missiles have been launched against Jihadist fighters.

Before everyone gets all excited by this, consider an alternate explanation:

If ISIS thinks their is a spy in their midst — whether or not there is one — perhaps they will start looking at each other with deep suspicion, then perhaps accusations will fly, heads will roll — literally in view of ISIS’s decapitation habit — and the organization will be disrupted by internal turmoil, perhaps even a palace coup, as the anti-ISIS coalition closes in for the kill. Trump’s genius plan with a little Kabuki “outrage” from the Israelis to help sell the op.

Trump guile/genius on display? Putin guile/genius on display? Israeli guile/genius on display? Or just the random unfolding of events?

Boiling mad? Sure, once they figured out how the narrative of “good friend Israel is helping American people, and bad Trump is betraying them by sharing this intelligence with Russians” turned into an accusation of economic sabotage by its “good friends”, the Arab monarchies, whose luxury airliners have been financially hit, as their high paying customers would not fly without their laptops. And, needless to say, it is not helping with those that are not exactly bosom buddies, like Egypt and Turkey — but do not need criticism from them, inflaming already high public hatred of Israel. A hastily concocted story of “hurt” Israel, who have broken to us this earth shattering intelligence that resulted in bans on laptops for a number of Middle East countries months ago, is now “mad” as the targets found out whose finger was involved in damaging their airlines.

Once laptops are banned from all airlines, I will believe in the seriousness of the policy.